Posts Tagged → manly
Are you into knives?
Are you into knives?
This is more of a question for men, most men, actually the vast majority of men, especially men who still identify as a man, and it is maybe a question for three women on the entire planet. It is not a question for the Western mincing limp wristed urban femboys of both straight and gay orientation, unfortunately.
A high-respect shout-out to the manly men in Africa and the Middle East, where tradition requires men to wear a real dagger at all times in public. That is heart-warming to see, especially in these days of artificially reduced testosterone and unnaturally lilting voices.
I am definitely into knives, and I have been so since I was about six years old. I received my first pocket knife at age six or seven, and I have never stopped enjoying using, carrying, and looking at well made knives on a daily basis.
Since the dawning of our species about a hundred thousand years ago, hand tools have had a particular appeal, especially hand tools with an edged or a good bludgeon at the end. Nothing speaks to a man like a well-made, well designed, purpose-made tool, and especially a knife tool. So much can be done with a good knife, like defending one’s self, acquiring dinner, making other tools, and just feeling prepared for whatever comes into the cave opening at night.
Hand tools are how our ancestors defeated much larger, hairier, and scarier beasts than even my buddy Irv, the stone and then bronze spear points drawing first blood and the following knife edges drawing delicious strips of fresh red meat to be roasted over fire and consumed. Sadly for our ancestors, they did not have cold beer to accompany their manly dinner combat and hand-to-hoof warfare meals, as we do today. But I digress. Maybe. Cold beer and good knives do go together. More on that later.
Point being that today about a zillion high quality knives are made and easily available to the manly men among us, and the adventurous women, too. This overflowing supply of knives exists because there is an unquenchable demand for them. Whatever desire we had ten thousand years ago for a good, well balanced, sharp blade in hand, has only become more and more acute as the knife materials have surpassed stone, bronze, and even anything high tech metal envisioned in Alien vs Predator movies.
Today, you can literally buy any kind of knife made of any kind of steel, iron, stone, copper or bronze, made in a dozen places around the world (Pakistan, Japan, America, Germany, China are leaders), for a decent price, and its quality will range from OK to unbelievably great. Like many knife aficionados, I enjoy watching videos of Pakistani and Indian families hand-make various knives from scrap steel of both poor and high quality. You can buy one of these knives and get a lifetime of service out of it. If you buy such a knife from an American or Canadian maker, you can get ten lifetimes of use out of it.
A quick search on eBay for outdoor, defensive, and recreational knives will yield a literal sh!t ton of variously shaped blades, handled in all kinds of wood, plastic, micarta, Z10, bone, ivory, mammoth ivory, and other creative materials. This surfeit of knives exists because humans the world over want them.
One of the challenges with acquiring as many knives as we want is how high tech is populated by mincing limp wristed femboys, both gay and straight. These sad eunuchs don’t desire a good blade in hand, they desire to put everyone else in their hand and control everyone and everything by way of deceit. Because they are intimidated by manly objects and words. And so neither PayPal nor Stripe will provide real-time banking services to online sellers of knives (or guns). Yes, you can buy some knives on eBay, but most of them appear to be cheap Chinese knockoffs of better quality designs.
Enter a new knives-only website, www.knifeenthusiast.com, that makes everything you like about shopping for and buying knives easier, more streamlined, more informed and informative, and just plain all-around better. The knives they have tend to be higher end, higher quality, custom made, and are for sale by guys like you and me. Disclaimer: I know the crazy guy founder of this website. Disclaimer: Yes, he really is crazy about knives. Despite being a genuine flatlander, he is a very masculine man, has fathered countless children just to prove his manliness, and likes guns n’ knives and hunting and war implements of all sorts, sizes, and historic periods like all other manly men. His house is a small museum or armory ranging from the 17th century until present day, as you might expect.
So go visit https://knifeenthusiast.com/ to satisfy your deep need for yet another edged weapon, and rest comfortably in the knowledge that you are supporting a small business run by people who think and experience life just like you.
ps Neither I nor this blog received or will receive any sort of remuneration for this essay. On this blog I write about what I like to write about because it pleases me. I like knives and I like small business entrepreneurs. I like my buddies. This essay combines these worlds.
Nice to see men wearing a knife, especially as a symbol of public necessity
My buddy Irv definitely has a knife thing
Could Today’s Young Americans do a June 6th D-Day?
Today is the 80th anniversary of the June 6th D-Day assault by a combined military force of Americans, British, Canadians, free French, Australians, Greeks, Czechs, Belgians, and others, on the beaches of Normandy, which officially began the Western democracies’ response to the great evils being perpetrated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and their allies.
A tremendous amount of heroism took place by the attackers on and around the beaches of D-Day Normandy, and by the paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines, some of it memorialized by movies like Saving Private Ryan. But most of D-Day was just simple military work – logistics with food, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, temporary shelters, etc., driving boats or loading boats, or cleaning boats or preparing or repairing boats, etc.
The men who made D-Day happen, whether way far away from the battle lines or way up close in front of it and right in it, were up to the task, whatever their own personal task was, because they came from a generation of westerners, generally, and Americans, specifically, who valued and knew hard work, who were comfortable taking reasonable risks, and who understood the importance of freedom. They did what was expected of them, and eventually won the war for freedom.
And so as I wandered around this past week “behind enemy lines”, so to speak, in a college town rife with young college age men and older men alike mincing and swishing, all, gay and straight, mind you, I wondered if today’s young Americans would be up to the task of a June 6th D-Day assault on entrenched defenders at Omaha Beach or Utah Beach in Normandy. Or even in an elementary school playground sandbox.
Looking at the ubiquitous un-athletic, unnaturally skinny, occasionally obese men, whose universal gait contains little to no masculine movement, no blocky limbs brought abruptly to the end of their motion forward or backward by tight muscles, but rather includes a most unnatural widely and fluidly swinging arms, with the wrist bending and the hands and fingers swinging upward, and dainty steps, I am thinking No.
Judging by what I have been seeing this past week, I would be betting on the bad guys with this generation of American men. Our guys just are not up to any sort of warrior spirit, much less warrior behavior or warrior actions. Frankly, from what I see, a majority of both the straight and the gay men today are girly. They all adopt lilting and nasally girly voices, baby talk like girls, and almost seem to aspire to be perceived as feminine. These guys are never going to carry a rifle into battle, much less shoot the rifle at their enemy, much less work hard with their bodies and develop manly muscles.
Why is this unnatural feminization of men and artificial dumbing down of 100% natural and 100% healthy maleness happening? Well, we can’t discount the overt assault on masculinity (so called “toxic masculinity”) by government schools, college professor indoctrinators, and pop culture. Recall the disastrous Gillette advertisement. Jiminy crickets.
We also have to consider the overt assault on little boys and boyhood by the educational and medical establishments. Fist fights are a huge no-no now. Fist fights among school boys were common when I grew up, and many of those boys on the other end of my fists ended up close friends until right now today. This was common practice for oh, about eighty thousand years of human development, but suddenly the feminine and incapable men convinced the masculine and highly physically capable men that being masculine and highly physical is bad, unworthy, etc. And so, boys can’t play cops and robbers anywhere any more, can’t pretend to shoot each other even with finger guns (gun shape made by pointing a finger like a gun barrel), and certainly cannot engage in any rough-and-tumble outside of a carefully circumscribed place of athletic activity. And of course, football, being the most aggressive and most testosterone-fueled sport, has been under attack by the media and medical establishments for a long time.
Speaking of testosterone, we know that testosterone levels are way down across America, and across all other Western countries, too. Probably a direct result of the lack of physical activity by boys and young men, and the emphasis on looking and acting feminine, and the wars on boyhood, manhood, and masculinity. As a result, lots of young women are complaining about being unable to find a manly man for a mate, and the older women are complaining that “there are no real men left.”
Plenty has been written and surmised about the effects of ubiquitous hormone-blocking herbicides (causing alligators in Lake Okeechobee to become hermaphroditic, an issue when I first started working at the USEPA in 1991) on both boys and girls and their sexual development.
Plenty has been written and surmised about the effects of over-drugging American children for supposedly “hyperactive” and “attention deficit” problems, which are really just evolutionary adaptive solutions in traditional hunter-gatherer societies (and now liabilities in our modern sedentary society).
Plenty has been written and surmised about the effects of over-drugging American children and adults alike for supposed “anxiety” disorders, which are really just normal human responses to the sensory and stimulation expectation overload addiction that is modern America.
And of course, the elites’ establishment narrative is that guns are bad.
And so here we are, mid-2024, celebrating and marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day, where manly men, masculine men, strong men, brave men, charged right into hellfire so that the world could live free. That’s you and me, son. And I don’t think most of today’s young men would or even could do any of what happened on June 6th, 1944, even if they decided they want to. What a huge failure.
Not only is this failure a shame, it is a huge signal to the world that America is very weak. And weakness invites takeover attempts by those who are not weak. And what amazes me is that the effeminate, mincing, swishing young men, straight and gay alike, do not realize that their effete and artificially soft lives will end abruptly, if they cannot man up and begin to become real men. That takes both a strong mind and a strong body.
A big Thank You to the men of D-Day, whose valor gave us Americans and Europeans freedom unlike the world had ever seen before, and which is now under great attack and pressure by enemies who are not afraid of us.
Tyrant wannabe David Hogg inspires 2A resilience
I photographed this in a visitor guide to Ithaca, New York. Scientific fact that only females can menstruate, but the mentally disabled want to not only pretend that biological men can menstruate, but that everyone must bow down and acknowledge it and support this craziness. This picture is a big part of what is killing America, and one cannot help but wonder who is really behind this
What Father’s Day means to me
When I was nine, my dad gave me a set of small Norlund axes, which I still have today. One was single bit, the other was double bit. My specific job with those was to chop and stack firewood all summer, until Dick Fye’s lumber mill stopped sending us slab wood by twenty-ton dump truck loads dropped in our yard.
Dad also gave me use of the chainsaw, which I probably used as much as he did, or more. By twelve I was felling substantial trees. Probably not expertly, but I am still here today, unscathed from that, so I must have been really lucky or pretty good.
Point being, that one of the most important roles that a father can perform is to raise his son(s) to be not just men, but manly men. Masculine men, as defined by all of the masculine things manly men have done since the emergence of our species. Historically, men defended their families and communities, and hunted food that provided for their families. Those are still critically important roles for men to fill. Today, running a chainsaw, correctly using axes to split and shape wood, hauling firewood, supplying your family with sufficient firewood every day from an early age, these are all traditional manly things that can still be done in modern times. Or you can do the updated sedentary society equivalent.
Yes, I am sure that there are plenty of women who can run a chainsaw and split firewood, and who also enjoy doing these things, and although they are far in the minority of women, I say good for them. But today is Father’s Day and we are focused on the male species X chromosome humans right now, fathers and their sons (which of course applies to the masculine gay men I know). And so I say Thanks, Dad, for raising me to be a masculine man capable of doing traditionally masculine things. My family depends on it, and beyond that America depends on manly, masculine warrior men in the military to defend us from our enemies. Only dads can provide that upbringing.
Thanks, Dad!
(about the memes below: I am sick and tired of being falsely badmouthed and assaulted and coerced and demanded and forced and threatened over someone else’s sexual preference or identity or what-have-you. The truth is that I do not care, and it is my individual right not to care, and to be left alone to not care, and to say F*** off if someone keeps pushing something I don’t care about in my face and demanding that I care, and it is also my individual freedom and right and natural instinct to be repulsed by certain behaviors that other people do, and to be naturally phobic of those behaviors. And so I am just throwing up a few memes to provide my own pushback, even if I do not necessarily agree with 100% of each one. Go ahead and be offended, I do not care. I myself have been offended by this nonsense for years and no one seems to care, so back atcha).
The king you got, not the king you wanted or needed?
Two days ago was Coronation Day in England, whereupon the former very very longtime Charles Prince of Wales became Charles King of England AKA King Charles III. Even in The Year of Our Blessed Freedom From Monarchy 2023, this is still a big deal, because like it or not, kings and queens can matter when they want to, for better or worse.
This new king follows on the heels of his most amazing and impactful mother Queen Elizabeth, whose traditional values and top notch leadership skills many people miss. It appears Charles also wants to matter, like his mother, to be of consequence, to make what he believes is a positive difference on Planet Earth. So, we take note of his ascendence. He may not be the high caliber of his mother, who many would have liked to have seen replaced by another woman or man of equal qualities (good luck finding such a person anywhere in Western Civilization today), but Charles is nonetheless now the monarch. For better or for worse, or most likely a mix of both really bad and some good, King Charles is not going to be invisible.
Setting aside the die-hard monarchists for a moment, there was still a lot of worldwide public interest in Saturday’s coronation, if only because several mini-dramas played out in the coronation process. One being the role of His Most Spoiled Brattiness Prince Harry (strategically blocked from camera view at the actual coronation by a tremendous red feather plume in his aunt Anne’s hat in front of him), two being the marked absence from the coronation of Harry’s horrendous harridan of a wife, MeGain Markle, three being the final and hard public point being put on Charles’ longtime relationship with Priscilla, which had been openly maintained even while Charles was married to the most glamorous human being ever to grace the earth, Princess Diana Spencer. Many people never forgave Charles for his affair and disrespecting of Diana, but now, it’s officially all over. Charles and Priscilla are officially married and officially King and Queen of England.
Surely there are other notable features of this coronation, but to me, the one that matters most is the one that almost no one (that I could find) took notice of, and that is King Charles’ masculinity and his love of field sports, notably hunting. With guns, and occasionally spears. In a world of the establishment war against boys, against masculinity and manhood, of forced and artificial feminization of men at every turn (like Bud Lite’s Dylan Mulvaney debacle in the USA), King Charles’ quiet but absolute manliness is a crucial symbol for normal people and for those who should want to return to being a natural, normal, healthy human.
If nothing else, King Charles may end up being a potent symbol of How To Be A Man. Laugh if you want about this, but at one time not too long ago, 99% of boys naturally wanted to become masculine men when they reached adulthood, to be service-minded police officers, brave firefighters, adventurous cowboys, heroic soldiers, and hunting was a bedrock experience that trained many boys for these fields. In a western world now under siege from within our borders and from within our own governments that are captured by our worst enemies, who among other things are doing double duty to weaken us by erasing manhood and masculinity from our population, having public symbols of masculinity and manhood, like King Charles, is more important than many people realize.
Setting aside his many bad policy positions, King Charles is no dithering dandy, no fop. Quite the opposite. He speaks firmly, rides tall in the saddle, properly and expertly handles rifle, pistol, and shotgun, and is not afraid to kill his own dinner or get blood or dirt on his hands or clothes. This is a king I could like and who we all need, if only because he is a real man. Long live this manly king.
Thanks to Westley Richards for this photo
American hunters need an accurate round ball shotgun
Lt. James Forsyth wrote a fabulously prescient and useful hunting ballistics book in 1861 from his unique perch in Colonial India, “The Sporting Rifle and its Projectiles.” Using single shot and double barreled muzzleloading rifles, with mere black powder as the propellant, Forsyth squared off against the most dangerous wild animals modern humans have met in battle since the end of the Pleistocene, when our forbears wiped out all of the even more dangerous and ill-tempered megafauna with mere stone tipped spears.
Hold this thought for a minute.
Today’s hunter thinks he needs a soulless, faceless, characterless Three Million Magnum plastic and stainless steel rifle getting 1/8″ accuracy at three miles when topped with the Hubble Telescope, capable of blasting a twelve-inch gaping hole in a steel plate at that same three miles. But the truth is these modern gee-whiz gizmos are dumbing down, blunting, ruining and corrupting the most beautiful, honest, and pure hunting instincts and abilities we have inherited from our fur-clad ancestors.
Sniping animals from impossible distances with weapons they cannot possibly detect or withstand is nothing more than aerial bombing or target shooting at vulnerable living creatures who deserve our greatest respect and admiration, and upon whom we should only inflict our will when we are offensively at their own level of defense.
That is, what honest sport is there in assassinating an unsuspecting wild animal whose honed instincts protect it from every other natural predator, whose own predatory skills must be equally or better honed in order to close the distance and survive another day on the flesh of the prey animal?
What honor is there in these long distance assassinations? I say none.
You say you like to hunt? Okay then, hunt, dammit. Actually hunting means: Get outside on the landscape of your choice and perfect your actual hunting skills. Learn to play the wind, move quietly, use the topography to your advantage, be patient, be attentive, coordinate well with other hunters, and understand the life and habits of your quarry. Then and only then will you be an actual hunter worthy of the honorable name of hunter.
Enough of this hochsitz heated shooting box overlooking a planted field while waiting for some pet buck to step out five minutes before shooting light ends crap. This is not hunting, it is sitting on your lazy ass and relying on high technology to do the real work for you. Unless you are physically disabled or elderly, a status I myself am approaching and fighting hard every step of the way, do not dishonor yourself with this beyond early morning and late afternoon times. Or at least do not dishonor real hunters who actually hunt by calling yourself one of them when you do it exclusively.
Back to Forsyth, who though slight of stature was of immense bravery and manly stoic British character. (Oh, the British…a great people, once, and with some yet living among them who remember the old ways and who could lead their people forward through these dark days…if they would but will it.) Anyhow, Lt. Forsyth was a small but tough little bastard who faced down 8,000-pound rogue elephants, 3,000-pound gaur bison, and 600 pound male tigers, with mere black powder muzzleloading rifles at powder-burn distances.
Regardless of how fatal his shot might be, or not, Forsyth’s hunting adventures were very often enriched by the smell of burning fur as locomotive-powered horns and fangs sped close by him on their way to trying to stamp him into a little red puddle. Gunpowder that is still burning as it exits the gun’s muzzle is likely to catch something on fire if it is close enough, including the hide of charging Death. Forsyth embodied the spirit of the hunter, at least the truly manly hunter willing to take a real risk to gain a genuine and truly earned prize. We who are hunters today must all admire Forsyth, and we must seek to emulate him as much as we can in today’s sad world of toxic femininity and low testosterone. Sniping unsuspecting animals with magnum firepower is gay, or lame, or pathetic; choose your own appropriate adjective, but don’t do it. If Forsyth could trust his life and limb to a round ball, then we can trust our tame deer hunts to it, too.
The singular principle of Forsyth’s sporting rifles (not military weapons, which operate on different principles with different goals) was the use of the round lead ball. Like Sir Samuel Baker in Africa and Ceylon, Forsyth found that large round lead balls sufficiently propelled and accurately placed would utterly crush the life force out of dangerous animals, as well as more demur animals one might simply bag for the pot. Bear in mind again that these two men, in particular Baker, discovered the effectiveness of the round ball by literally shooting dangerous game at such close distances that any small mistake would probably mean life-changing injury or death. They got this close in order to ensure the proper placement of their ball, not to test themselves and see if they could cheat Death.
For mere deer and elk, Baker used a shortened Claymore sword. Yes, he hunted and killed deer species of all sizes (including Highland red stag) by hand, at close quarters combat. So, again, do not lower yourself to shooting unsuspecting animals at long distances with gigantic magnum calibers. Be a man and a hu-man, and get out on the landscape within spitting distance and earn that critter. Archery hunters know and do this innately, and are thus justifiably proud of their kills. Same for traditional muzzleloading hunters, spear chuckers, atl-atl launchers, and handgun hunters.
Today, to implement both Forsyth’s hunting spirit and technological advances in ballistics, so that we might be the best firearm hunters we can possibly be and also be the most practical hunters we can be in an increasingly regulated environment, we need a modern firearm that achieves multiple goals simultaneously.
To that end, I propose the single shot and double barreled shotgun, rifled with Forsyth rifling. Any well made utility grade shotgun will do just fine. Most of the old but trusty utility double barrel shotguns like the Savage Fox Model B or the Stevens Model 311 should take a slight rifling just fine, because their ridiculously thick barrels could be just as easily used to club baby seals as seal the explosive gasses of fired ordnance.
OK, pump and semiauto shotguns could have Forsyth rifled barrels, too. It’s just that our skills improve when we are challenged by (self-imposed) limitations.
Forsyth rifling is specially designed for the round ball at black powder velocities between 1,100 and 1,900 feet per second. This rifling has very shallow depth grooves, like 2/1000 of an inch to 3/1000 of an inch, as well as a very slow twist rate. Like one full turn of the cut rifling in 72-90 inches. With appropriate powder charges in modern steel barrels, either black powder or smokeless powders can be safely used, and both fabulous accuracy and devastating knockdown power achieved. The perfect “brush gun,” at the least.
Using black powder, Forsyth satisfactorily tested his rifling and round balls out to 250 yards, saying that within 150 yards it was exactingly accurate. Probably consistent 1-2 inch groups. With big lead balls. Imagine what can be done using smokeless powder.
To my knowledge, nothing like Forsyth rifling is employed in modern shotguns today. Despite or perhaps because of the ongoing craze for shotguns accurately shooting massive slugs (like TarHunt), sabots, and conicals, it seems the lowly but easily obtained and highly effective round ball has been shelved because too many of them were ineffectively shot at deer and bear out of smoothbore shotguns, or shot out of tightly rifled shotgun barrels designed for conical bullets and sabots.
Round balls have received bad press because here in America they have not been correctly matched with proper rifling except for smaller deer and bear caliber-sized single shot muzzleloading rifles. Time for a change!
One constant and legitimate knock against “punkin balls” is that they were terribly under powered, meant more for imprecise point blank shooting at animals in thick cover. This problem can be easily fixed by correctly loading round balls into shotgun hulls for use in appropriately rifled barrels that will give deadly accuracy and destructive force to round balls. Meaning, add more powder! Pap’s old “punkin balls” would have actually shot incredibly accurately had they gone through barrels with Forsyth rifling.
So let us return to a simpler, cheaper, and frankly more manly and effective firearm: The modern shotgun with Forsyth rifling, designed to very accurately and effectively propel a 20, 16, or 12-guage round lead ball (only 350 to 600 grains weight 😳) around 1,500 feet per second. Put these velocity-times-mass kinetic energy numbers in your pipe and smoke it! You will smoke every deer and bear you hit with such powerful projectiles!
And for those hunters concerned about the cost and availability of hunting projectiles and reloading, there is nothing simpler than pouring your own lead round balls and reloading shotgun hulls. Push come to shove with components, you can most easily obtain lead and black powder, and shotgun hulls are reloadable about twenty times each.
Shooting round balls might feel like going backwards, but in many ways the simpler ways and days were better.
Today I submitted a written request to Henry Repeating Firearms, makers of sturdy, accurate, no-frills shotguns perfect for employing Forsyth rifling, that they please consider undertaking such a project. Let’s say to start, manufacture 100 Forsyth rifling single shot break-action shotguns, tested with correct diameter round balls fired from common shotgun hulls with commonly obtainable smokeless and black powders.
If the 100 single shots sell well, then try a few dozen double barrel shotguns that have received some elementary “regulating” whereby the two barrels are brought into pointing harmony with one another. Each barrel should place its ball at or near the landing point of the other barrel, fully converging together within a 75-120 yard distance.
In conclusion, let us say we pursue this particular goal if not for efficiency, effectiveness, and ease of reloading, then to restore our rightful place and reputation as American riflemen, long hunters, frontiersmen with pluck and the best hunting skills on Planet Earth bar none. Shooting round balls within 200 yards is true fair-chase, ethical hunting.
Lieut. James Forsyth of the British Bengal Riflemen Corps posing with some of his well-earned Asian hunting trophies in about 1860. All of which he took with the black powder round ball. Look at the tiger skull that is the size of Forsyth’s entire chest. Note the tiger skin into which quite a few full-sized Forsyths could be stashed all at one time. We hunters today would do well to use Forsyth’s properly arranged round ball technology.
Sir Samuel Baker, gentleman, ultimate stud, patriot, hunter, fearless adventurer and most tender, devoted, and loving husband to a slave woman he liberated. We should all yearn to be like Sir Samuel in some way or another. Maybe it will just be hunting with a powerful round ball instead of a hyperkinetic missile.